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Supernatural Horror in Literature · 1927
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is Lovecraft's philosophy of horror in one line: the scariest thing is not a monster but what you cannot see or name. That idea runs through Cthulhu, cosmic dread and every film that holds back its creature. Writers and game designers quote it when explaining why the dark, the unexplained and the vast frighten us more than any visible threat.
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In context
Spoilers for Supernatural Horror in LiteratureShow the scene
These are the opening words of H. P. Lovecraft's long essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", his survey of weird and horror fiction. He researched and wrote it between November 1925 and May 1927, and it first appeared in August 1927 in The Recluse, a one-issue amateur magazine. Lovecraft revised and expanded it in 1933 and 1934, and the full revised text became widely available in The Outsider and Others in 1939. The sentence is his thesis for what follows.
Sources (2)
- Wikiquote: H. P. LovecraftQuotes section, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927)Reference checked
- Wikipedia: Supernatural Horror in LiteratureLead and Publication historyReference checked
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